Waiting for noon and a recess appointment

Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, said, “An important feature of this election, with implications for 2008, is that the center of the electorate clearly doesn’t like to be ignored in an era of base politics. The Republicans played to the base at their great peril among the middle.”

After a campaign that only escalated the tension between Mr. Bush and Congressional Democrats, the president will now face overwhelming pressure to take a more conciliatory approach.

Bush is incapable of conciliation. Nor is he due any compromise. You want mandate? Tuesday was a mandate.

Speaking of which: We heard last night that the president has recess funny business planned, specifically a recess appointment of Republican hatchet man Tim Griffin to replace U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins in Little Rock. But we heard this before the votes started rolling in. Bush's pursuit of this long-rumored appointment -- which could not be confirmed in the Senate before, much less now if Democrats take control -- will be some measure of what sort of lessons he's learned and what sort of uniting spirit he's really adopted.

More by Max Brantley

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge went to court late yesterday to get the state Supreme Court to halt mediation ordered by Circuit Judge Tim Fox in the case over issuing birth certificates to same-sex parents.

The men and women who patrol Little Rock in black and white vehicles tell a story in black and white.

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Betsey Wright, former President Bill Clinton's chief of staff when he was Arkansas governor, responds bitterly to a New York Times article today quoting Whitewater Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's warm words about Clinton. She can't forget the lives Starr ruined in Arkansas.

What's purported to be a final-words essay from condemned prisoner Kenneth Williams was distributed today by Deborah Robinson, a freelance journalist in Arkansas. He reflects on his execution, his victims, reactions of inmates and big servings of fried chicken, which he says are given to all inmates on execution days.

Lawyers facing federal court sanctions for forum shopping a class action insurance case have brought in new legal guns from out of state to fight potential sanctions.

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One of the booths at this week's Ark-La-Tex Medical Cannabis Expo was hosted by the Arkansas Hemp Association, a trade group founded to promote and expand non-intoxicating industrial hemp as an agricultural crop in the state. AHA Vice President Jeremy Fisher said the first licenses to grow experimental plots of hemp in the state should be issued by the Arkansas State Plant Board next spring.